You guys ever check out Vallecito Stage Coach station?

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

Last night I camped out there with a friend, and while we didn't see some of the bigger things that have been reported there, we did experiance a decent amount.  I have tons of recordings to review to see what we caught yet though.  It's basically an old stage coach station that is now a campground, with a cemetary on one end.  The downside is that it's like an hour and a half drive from San Diego.  Since it was a holiday weekend, there were a few other people there camping, but on a normal weekend, I bet it is pretty empty.

So what did we see?  Well it's actually a decent size place, on one end, the best way to describe it is kind of a maze of trees and shrubs filled with campgrounds that were all empty, this end is where the cemetary is at.  We were looking for the cemetary at about 10pm, before the moon was up, and it was pretty dang dark.  We both had our headlamps for light.  Chuck went off to one side a little, and I went to another side, we were close enough to talk though.  I stopped to shoot some pictures and video in this area around this spooky looking tree.  I then heard footsteps on the path behind me, they were pretty loud and clearly human.  I could see Chucks light on the other side of me, so I knew it wasn't him.  I thought somebody else was out there mucking with me, so I turned out my light so they couldn't see me.  Nothing no more footsteps, so I went back around the corner a few feet, switched my light on expecting to see somebody, nothing.  I never heard footsteps going away.

We pretty much debunked it as somebody in the woods messing with us, or sound carried on the wind.  So we continued exploring, now together.  As we walked, we both heard footsteps again behind us, but couldn't find or see anybody.  Then we found the cemetary and Chuck was taking some pictures and stuff, so I walked a bit away behind it.  Now I heard footsteps right in front of me, pretty dang loud.  So I started chasing them with my camera on, I swear they were right in front of me within about 10 feet, but I coudn't see anything.  I followed them around a corner, into a path that totally dead ended in thick brush, nobody was there.  I'm pretty confident that it wasn't a person, I had my light on, and was moving fast, they didn't have a light and couldn't be moving that fast in the dark.  Plus they had nowhere to go.  I'm pretty sure something was messing with me.  I got a little provocative, trying to get a reaction or an EVP or something, and then it stopped 

Are there fireflys in the desert?  I grew up in Ohio and am used to swarms of fireflys.  I was doing an EVP session back by that spooky tree area, no lights on, nobody around.  Didn't touch my eyes, so I didn't get an afterimage.  Yet I saw something that looked exactly like a Firefly move slowly around the tree.  It was the only one I saw all night, and I thought it was weird that there was only one, not many.  The firefly look makes me feel it wasn't paranormal, but I'm not sure.

We spent a lot of time in our chairs up near the station as well.  Early in the evening there was a few people moving around, talking and laughing, so audio is pretty mucked up, but we still had some pretty interesting stuff that better dang well be on video and tape.  The station is closed down, all the doors and windows are locked, we checked many times last night, next time, were going to see if we can get permission to get inside.  So we setup our chairs close to it with our gear arrayed around, there is a covered section on one side.  I did EMF sweeps with my Trifield, and it's a really really flat EMF area.  It's the middle of the desert, go figure.  We got a few incidents of odd EMF hits on my KII meter.  I use my KII in the dark for EVP sessions, locked on. The first time, it flashed red 3 times in a row.  Then later it did it twice.  Nothing on us puts out EMF that the KII picks up, and I also know that moving the KII fast can make it go yellow.  It wasn't movement.  Nothing definitive, but we really got some odd EMF activity.  My friend did see it as well.

Later on around 1am, everybody else was asleep, so it was a lot quieter (and colder.)  We were again sitting up by the station, several times we heard some bangs and thumps from inside the locked building.  Honestly, we think it could have been the wind somehow though.  Yet the wind wont cause the growl that came from behind the door to my left.  Yes a grwoling noise, it was loud and audible, we both heard it, and it came from inside.  I can't explain that one.  We both heard it, so it should be on tape, I'll post it when I find it.

Well I'm off to start looking through recordings, I'll post anything that we found.  PPI really should take a camping trip some weekend, have fun during the day and hunt at night.

[ttjoon]

This is cool, Michael.  Please post what ever you find.  Should be interesting to see what you come up with.  Let us know! 

[johnny]

Sounds like it was a good trip!

[PPI Brian]

Sounds very intriguing, Mike. Let us what you turn up in your evidence review. 

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

I just got done going through all the evidence a second time, took me forever.  There were two things really working against us that night, first it was windy as hell, second because it was a holiday weekend, there were some other campers, and their sounds did carry on the wind.  This made audio review very difficult, and maybe I caught something, but they could have been background noise.

With the firefly effect, I caught nothing and didn't expect too, because it was behind the camera.

With the footsteps, I have some very Blair Witchy footage of me chasing something, but no proof of the footsteps.  In the begining with the first couple of times, I was buying into the it's noises on the wind or somebody else was close by us, but the last two times, pretty much convinced me something paranormal was going on.  They were too close and I would have seen somebody.  The wind noises in the mic totally destroyed any chance at hearing the footsteps.  Unfortunately without any proof, I'm left with just a story.

I did catch the EMF spikes on video, but unfortunately that doesn't prove anything.  Over a period of 4 hours, we got some odd spikes with the meter sitting in exactly the same place.  It only really happened two different times with just the K2 freaking out.  No clue.

Then there is the growl.  We were sitting in the same place where we got the K2 spikes, basically we sat there a lot by the building.  I know I heard a growl, it was pretty dang loud.  Then I asked Chuck if he heard "that."  I'm always careful and ask if "did you hear that?" keeping what I heard to myself, to see if he heard the same thing.  He said he heard a growl.  I had my audio recorder sitting right by me, and my camcorder was on a tripod over by the door.  That door is where the growl seemed to come from.  So if anything, I expected the growl to be on my camcorder.   Nothing, zilch, nadda, zero, on both the camcorder and the audio recorder.  You hear us going "did you hear that?" and talking about the growl, but you don't hear the growl.  Figures.

So in the end, I have no real evidence, just personal feelings, which don't mean jack.  I will however strongly reccomend this campground as an interesting and fun place to camp.  Maybe you will experiance something too.